dogs
The following is what I can only imagine goes through Kendall’s head every morning. It’s pretty much always the same thing, the same back and forth of emotions, the same rivalry with the dog. This nearly 2 year old little boy seems to have the mood swings of a PMSing 16 year old girl.
::rub eyes, check to make sure all toys and books are still in bed with me, see that I still have room on this mattress for more stuff, crawl out of bed and toddle over to the sock drawer, bring back all the socks I can carry in my chubby arms, climb back in bed and be happy::
Hmmm.. I’m hungry, and I can’t find the cheese I tried to bring to bed with me last night.
“MA! MAAAAAA!!….. DA?…Woof??”
::sit, wait, undo diaper::
I think I hear her coming… yup… there she is! Quick, show her all the socks!
“MA!!”
Oh wait, I’m not ready to get out of bed. I’m still sleepy! NO! Why is she making me get out of bed?!
“NO. Grrrrrrrr. No!”
::flailing limbs, body to jelly::
Must resist clean diaper. If she gets a clean diaper on me, she’ll think she can put clean clothes on me. Do NOT WANT CLOTHES! Oh look, a dog.
“Woof!”
::smile::
Dammit, how did she get that diaper on me! Stupid distracting dog trick.
::turn to jelly again when set on floor, collapse into puddle of screaming::
Why is she asking me what’s wrong? I don’t know! … Oh, breakfast. Yes! Bananas!
::stand up, run to kitchen, wait by bananas, lose patience::
“Nanananana! Pease! EEEEEE!”
::watch mom like a hawk, making sure she doesn’t ruin the banana by taking the peel off for me::
Whew. That was close.
::unpeel banana by myself because I’m grown up like that, leave peel on the floor, scream at dog when she tries to eat it::
OMG! OMG, what just happened?! OH NO! The banana is broken! I BROKE THE BANANA! This will not DO! How could I do this?
“Uh OH!”
::throw banana on floor, crying::
NO! Why is the dog eating the banana?! That’s MY broken banana! Give it back!
::SCREAMS VERY LOUD::
Why is she not getting me a new banana? What does she mean USE MY WORDS?! Use YOUR words and tell the dog to give me back my broken banana!
::hit mommy::
There, now go get me a new banana…. Wait… what? Where are you taking… to TIMEOUT?? Are you for real?! It’s the dog’s fault!
::sit in stupid boring corner, take off socks, be bored, give dog evil glare, vow to never drop her food from the table again::
Yes, mommy. I’m sorry. Yes, I know. No hitting. Yes, I’ll give you a hug. And look at how cute and sweet I am, don’t ever forget it. Here’s a sweet smile just for you.
::hug mommy, walk over and hug dog, but this doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven::
Oh look! Diego!
“Go Go!”
::run over to TV, eat new banana, drink milk, lay head on doggie::
I love Diego. I love bananas. I love my doggie.
Kendall is nearly 23 months old, and sometimes I wonder if Midol might help.
Let me paint you a picture of my life right now. I’ll hit you up with all five senses.
You can’t see the bottom of our closet through the massive mound of dirty clothes (and honestly, some of them aren’t dirty, but they’ve gone so long without getting put away that we just tossed them back in the pile), Kendall’s laundry is piled in the hall next to the laundry room, waiting for it’s turn after the pee-soaked towels are done in the wash. There are dishes stacked in the sink, my kitchen floor has visible foot prints. I am suddenly disgusted by the amount of dog drool stuck to the walls and the baseboards should be burned.
It sounds like screaming, and whining, and Diego, and a washing machine running, and a white noise machine on the in the background that I always forget to turn off after I get my terrorist toddler out of bed in the morning. It sounds like “Uh oh, uh oh, uh oh, UH OH!” and like “It’s NOT an uh oh if you do it on PURPOSE”. It sounds like a giant dog pissing on my carpet AGAIN.
It feels like a grimy table that’s next to impossible to get all the stuck on granola cereal cleaned off of. It feels like sticky tile floors. It feels like stepping in a wet puddle of pee and wondering if it’s from the boy or the dog.
It tastes like coffee, a lot of it… and then later it tastes like wine. It tastes like omelets for lunch AGAIN because I know he’ll eat eggs. It tastes like chips, secretly consumed when the kid’s not looking.
It smells like pee. It’s inescapable. It also smells like I need to vacuum AGAIN. It smells like vinegar and water cleaning solution. It smells like baking soda where I’ve tried to soak up the pee. It still smells mostly like pee.
Today I’m not holding it all together very well. Today I’m frustrated and annoyed and overcome with guilt. Today I want nothing more than a break from my son. I want the whining and the screaming and the tantrums and the turning to jelly so that I can’t possibly gracefully pick him up from the floor of the bounce house and take him home to stop. I want it to be someone else’s problem for just a little bit. I want to come home to a house that is clean and will FUCKING STAY THAT WAY. Counter to what you may think of my housekeeping skills based on the description above, I do actually clean. A. LOT. I want my dog, my nearly 7 year old dog who has had diabetes since he was 5 months old, requiring 2 shots of insulin a day, to get his damn blood sugar under control and to stop PEEING IN MY HOUSE. I want to leave this place and go on a vacation.
Today I’m guilty. I’m drowning in guilt. It’s washing over me and beating me against a rock wall. I don’t know what’s wrong with my nearly 2 year old kid. It could be that he’s nearly 2, or it could be that he’s not feeling well. I thought about making an appointment at the pediatrician, but I really have nothing to base it off of (no fever, no runny nose, no cough, no rash) other than him seeming completely and utterly bipolar for the last week. I want to have more patience with him. I envision myself being more loving, more kind, less frustrated. I hate that I get frustrated. I HATE THAT I WANT A BREAK.
I feel guilty for not caring more about my sweet, loving English Mastiff Bruno. I mean, I do care, but it’s hard to remind myself that he can’t help peeing all over the place when his blood sugar is at 400 for the 3rd day in a row. We left the dogs over the weekend with a dog sitter checking in on them twice a day. With his blood sugar being so high, he couldn’t make it the 12 hours between visits to potty outside. We came home to a house that smells like a kennel. The dog sitter did a great job cleaning it up, but this place isn’t going to be the same until we clean the carpets. I hate that I’m so irritated by this.
It took nearly an hour and a half to finally get out of the house this morning and head to the gym. You know, the gym that watches my kid for 2 hours? Yeah, Kendall doesn’t like the child care center. He’s been three times now and each time he sits by the door cries or whimpers the entire time we’re working out. (It doesn’t help that the last time I came to pick him up I found him playing with a file drawer and grabbing a stapler. The staff, at least the times we’ve been so far, seem apathetic and it’s starting to piss me off.) He started screaming the minute we pulled into the packed parking lot, just moments after I realized I forgot my headphones. Enough. It was enough to just say eff it. I got a coffee at a nearby drive through and headed to the bounce house. It was, of course, storming and pouring the whole time. Once there, 5 minutes of happy followed by incessant request for “nacks”, followed by inevitable meltdown.
Finally home, I fed the kid, what else, some form of eggs with cheese and veggies. While getting him ready for his nap, I made the strangest, most mind boggling discovery. I took his shoe off and noticed his sock was wet. The other one was, too, but just a tiny bit. Hmm… I thought it was probably the rain, although I figured it was weird that he didn’t seem to get wet anywhere else while we were out. I smelled the sock (like a reflex, I now smell all fluids since becoming a parent). It was soaked in PISS. The diaper? Dry. The shorts? Dry. The right shoe? Most definitely smelled like piss, too.
My dog peed on my kid.
::hands thrown in the air::
I’m done. I need a vacation. I need to go somewhere far, far away from diapers and dog piss. I want to go somewhere where the only fluid I’m smelling is wine.
Yesterday I planned to blog all about my many ideas for a vacation and ask for your opinions. Unfortunately, I just spent all my blogging time breaking down over pee.
I’ll try to get it together for the vacation post tomorrow.
Kendall is 22 months old, and I love him, I really, really, really do. More than anything. And I’m so grateful that he’s healthy and that he’s so amazing. And I hate that I want I break, that I even think about wanting a break. I hate it.
While some bloggers are taking this time to look to the next year and predict what it might hold for them in terms of personal success, like my bloggy friend The Feminist Breeder (check her out on TLC soon, and no she’s not a little person), I am thinking of the next year only in terms of poop, pee, potties… potty training. Yes, I am hoping that 2010 is the year of the potty trained toddler in this house.
All signs are really pointing to potty training, I believe, starting with the trail of turds left on our living room floor “Christmas” morning at home (which was really Jan. 1st due to all our crazy holiday travel). Turns out he was so excited by all his presents that he crapped his pants, then, while out of view, decided he didn’t like the feeling of crap IN his pants and undid his diaper from inside his cute Christmas jammies. I noticed he was starting to stink so I called a present opening timeout and went to change him. As I removed his fleece bottoms, turdlets flew from them and across his room.
“Well, I guess it’s a good thing none of them fell out in here,” I said as I brought him back to the living room.
“Uh… I think I see one… Yup, that is definitely poop,” Scott replied and he reached down to retrieve it with a piece of crumpled wrapping paper.
I immediately looked down and directly to my right was another one… to my left, another.
“Ewwwww!! Oh my God! DON’T MOVE. There might be more,” I said, and we all (including my dad and his wife) began searching through the litter on the floor to make sure we retrieved them all.
Later that day we drove to San Antonio for my brother’s wedding and checked into a hotel. Kendall crept to a corner of the room behind the bed and made lots of hilarious farts and funny faces. Yeah, I knew what he was doing, but I wasn’t going to interject and try to put him on the potty. I was too tired. Seconds later he retrieves the bag of diapers and the wipes and lays them in front of me on the floor. Oh, so I see we are REALLY not liking the poop in the pants feeling, eh? This is a sign, no? A sign he’s “ready”? I think so.
We’ve tried sitting him on the little Baby Bjorn potty chair countless times. He’s never produced anything for us, though. However, he *has* learned that we will blow bubbles for him while he sits there in an effort to keep him there as long as possible, in hopes that something will eek it’s way out. He now has a really convincing act in which he sort of corrals us and runs to the bathroom door, making lots of desperate noises that cause us, in turn, to act like complete fools, shouting things like “Ooh! You have to go POTTY??!! Yay! LET’S GO POTTY! Let’s poo poo like a BIG boy in the POTTY!” He settles down on the chair, smiles and plain as day says, “Bubble?”
Scott even tries to get him into the spirit by showing him what a “poop face” looks like and grunting for him. His efforts are noble and hilarious at the same time, although I did tell him in the hotel that he was singlehandedly going to make potty training Kendall 10 times harder after this exchange:
Me: “Ooh, I think Kendall has a dirty diaper. That stinks! Kendall, did you go poopy?”
Kendall: “No”
Scott: “Uhh.. no, that was me. Sorry.”
::a few minutes pass::
Me: “Damn, Scott. Did you fart again?”
Scott: “No. I swear.”
:: a diaper inspection proves this time Kendall is the culprit::
Me: “What the HELL? You two have the same foul smell coming from your ass. Is that genetic?”
This morning we pretty much had a repeat of “Christmas” morning. Kendall pooped, reached into his pants and undid his diaper, ran amok in the living room and dropped a turd right by the couch. It was a pretty raunchy diaper and I could see more of it threatening to ooze out of his pants so I was faced with the dilemma of cleaning up the poop on the floor then or cleaning it up after I cleaned Kendall up. I foolishly opted to clean Kendall first. The dogs took care of the turd while I was gone. This was not the first time they’ve gone after such delicacies, but, to my knowledge, it IS the first time they succeeded in their quest.
Inspired by my best friend whose little boy is merely 6 weeks older than Kendall and already wearing “big boy undies” for most of the day with no accidents, I took Kendall to Target today and purchased his first package of briefs “just like daddy’s!”, except these have Elmo on them. I briefly wondered why they didn’t make grown men underwear with matching characters on them, thinking maybe that would make potty training even more “fun” for all involved. Then I realized how wrong that picture really was… on so many levels.
So we’ve got the “big boy undies”, the little potty, we’ve even got the Elmo Potty book (a fantabulous Christmas gift from the grandparents). I *think* we even have a little bit of “interest” in the whole ordeal, or at least interest in not having shit stuck to his ass. I know it may seem early to some, but I’m going to run with it for now. January is a dreadful month anyway, and we’ll most like be stuck inside most of the time. Might as well take advantage, right? My friend has invited me to go through hell week with her as she employs what she calls the “naked bootie” method with her son. I’m game. I’m also open to any other suggestions you marvelous readers of mine might have. So spill it.
Kendall is 20 months old
10. He smells
9. He’s always dirty
8. He will eat anything off the floor
7. He slobbers
6. I am forever cleaning up his shit
5. He pooped in the backyard yesterday (result of some naked time at the sand and water table)
4. I can’t sleep with him in the same bed without getting a butt in my face and a cramp in my ass
3. He has no respect for my personal bubble of space or private potty time
2. He comes running anytime he hears the refrigerator, pantry or just a bag of chips open
1. He aint too proud to beg (see exhibit a —->>>>)
Kendall is 13 months old, and pulling on my pants, begging for some Veggie Stix
They could always count on me to throw them something from my plate. Usually it’s my sandwich or pizza bones (crusts) that they are guaranteed to get. However, I’ve been so hungry lately that I’ve cleaned my plate in a matter of minutes without even thinking of tossing anything their way. Quite honestly, I’m surprised I still have all my fingers and haven’t mistakenly tried to eat one of them. I caught the look of desperation, disgust, and confusion in my Lab’s eyes yesterday as I polished off my tuna melt sandwich – bones and all. She seemed to say, “What??!!! What is wrong with you? That was MY sandwich bone! Gah…you’re such a pig!” and then sulked off. Now I have graham crackers on the table next to the bed, hoping that if I eat one before I get up I won’t feel the incredible urge to vomit by the time I make it to the bathroom to pee. They keep eying them, like I set them out on the night table as some sort of puppy buffet. I swear, I will kick their ass if they even try to eat them.
I’m going to need to learn how to say NO. My poor Labrador is hobbling around my apartment right now with her tongue hanging three feet of out her panting pink mouth. I feel so bad for her. We just got back from a three mile run for me and a four mile run for my husband, and we let her convince us it was a good idea to take her. In the cooler months she has no problem running four miles every day with my husband, but I wanted to die after three miles in the humidity today so I can only imagine how she feels : ( It’s just she gives us these pleading puppy eyes (she’s a Lab after all…that’s what they do best) and I just feel so bad for not taking her.
Well, after seeing her sad little face when we got back I realized I need to toughen up. Sometimes saying NO is the best thing for them. Really, what kind of parent will I be if my child begs, “Please mommy, can I eat that whole bucket of ice cream? I haven’t had ice cream in 4 days!” gives me the sad eyes and I say yes? They will end up in an f-ing coma, and I will feel like a tool.
I really hope my dogs aren’t indicative of my parenting skills. If that’s the case, I’m pretty sure my children will be laying their drooling heads on strangers laps at restaurants in hopes of catching a few crumbs, and curling up in the middle of our bed – sideways, farting in our face as we sleep and pushing us to the far corners of our queen size mattress. Maybe it will be easier to say NO to somebody who talks back to me…and isn’t so furry.